Dr. Tyson merely grouped objects in the solar system based on similar properties at the museum that he works at for their big multi-million dollar renovation.

His decision to not enumerate the planets was based on prevailing winds in the science circles already. The decision that the IAU made for Pluto's "demotion" was in no way influenced by Dr. Tyson's actions at his museum.

Yeah, really. That was my first thought: what the hell, first you say it's not a planet, but now we're back to moons? I know, call them dwarf-moons...or moonoids!While whatever definition it's under might still have it be correct to call them moons, it still seems silly.

"This and the large size of Charon relative to Pluto has led some astronomers to call it a dwarf double planet". (wiki)Didn't pay attention to nyx and hydra, since wasn't sure if the orbits were convoluted by the barycenter of the main two or not.

Was going to post much the same question. However, anything in space can have a moon since all that means is an object trapped in the parents gravity field. So yes, even planetoids can have moons. In fact, even a moon can have moons. But that would be very uncommon as a moons moon would most likely get pulled out of orbit by what the moon is orbiting.

The point was a majority of people who happened to vote in some panel at an IAU conference decided Pluto isn't a planet. Given that, why get worked up over the name of a moon of a plutoid, one among many?

That would be a good pairing. I voted Lethe and Styx. My beef with the voting is that many of the names work much better pairwise, but you could end up mix and match. I guess that's only an issue until the next moon is found, but even so, Eurydice and Lethe just wouldn't be as good.

A minor clarification: I got the idea before I even RTFA (and seen the list and voted). It sort of felt immediately obvious. But I think the choice is obvious for anyone with high shool education, so perhaps it's not that surprising.

I still haven't gotten over Pluto's demotion. I just don't wanna revisit that whole thing. Moon, shmoon, whatever, it will never be the same.Anyway I'm sure somebody out there's already got perfectly good names for them...

Darn! You beat me to it! Even though not Hades related, in this situation, they fit the bill perfectly! I guess we will have to wait till they discover new moons of Neptune for them to be in play though!

You're in luck, then. Acheron (agony) and Alecto (rage) are on the list of candidates, as is Erebus (darkness - more specifically, the embracing darkness that envelops and smothers you as it drags you to Hades).

Aww, but those are waaay too baddass for these piddly little rocks way out in the farthest reaches of the solar system. They'd be better reserved for massive asteroids with the potential to hit Earth - the names would very apropos.

... they could say they were keeping up the habit of naming them after elements of backwards pagan mythologies, then name them Belphegor and Asmodeus, and wait to see how long it takes for someone to get it.

But I could not google all their names. He has a brother named K.B. and five nephews, apparently unnamed.

Pluto was one of the most popular cinema cartoons when Pluto was named. It was named for Roman god underworld and fit in with his three brothers, father and grandfather - the other five outer planets. But the press at the time noted the connection with cartoon character with kids imagination.

Unfortunately, the article ommits that the local swimming pool was an even better idea, not only because Bud Spencer actually took part in a swimming contest in his youth at that very pool (IIRC), but also has that nice pun with Bud and Bad (= pool)